Nicolas Cage doesn’t consider himself an actor

IANS | Los Angeles

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage manages to surprise and find completely original ways to approach roles and yet he doesn’t prefer the term “actor”. “For me it always implies, ‘Oh, he’s a great actor, therefore he’s a great liar’,” Cage said, reports variety.com. “So with the risk of sounding like a pretentious asshole, I like the word ‘thespian’ because thespian means you’re going into your heart, or you’re going into your imagination, or your memories or your dreams, and you’re bringing something back to communicate with the audience.”

Cage speaks extensively about his career on the latest episode of Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast, from being born into a family of artists (his uncle is Francis Ford Coppola) to his current film, ‘Pig’. He knows that his unique acting choices can sometimes be perceived as broad. When asked about the term “over the top”, he replies, “Well, when they say that to me, I say, ‘You tell me where the top is and I’ll tell you whether or not I’m over it.”

Cage notes that his choices have been by design -- trying to break form with what audiences have been used to seeing. “It was my aunt Talia Shire who first said to me, ‘Naturalism is a style,” he said. “And I was also a big believer in art synchronicity, and that what you could do with one art form you could do and another meaning.

You know, in painting, for example, you can get abstract, you can get photorealistic, you can get impressionistic, why not try that with film performance?” Cage continued: “Stanislavski said the worst thing an actor can do is imitate. Being a bit of a rebel, I wanted to break that rule. So I tried with ‘Wild at Heart,’ a Warhol-like approach to the Sailor Ripley character.

“In movies, like ‘Prisoners of the Ghost Land’ or even ‘Face/ Off’ or ‘Vampire’s Kiss,’ I was experimenting with what I would like to call Western Kabuki or more Baroque or operatic style of film performance. Break free from naturalism, so to speak, and express a larger way of performance.” The actor admits he was looking to return to a more subtle style.